Which is the real face of Brett Kavanaugh?
AS AMERICA’S Supreme Court nominee was being outed as an alleged sexual predator, Bill Cosby was being led handcuffed into prison.
Once known as ‘America’s Dad’, the disgraced 81-year-old now goes by his new moniker, inmate NN7687.
Cosby got slammed with a sentence of up to 10 years after being convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand.
For decades he had preached family values and decency when in truth he was not what he seemed, with dozens of women claiming he sexually abused them too.
The sitcom star was so adept at playing the good guy he fooled everyone, apart from his victims. We could never have imagined that The Cosby’s Show’s Dr Huxtable was really Mr Hyde.
His reckoning was long – too long – in coming. But what will undoubtedly prove to be more important than the actor’s conviction is that finally, the #Me Too movement is making a real change.
Women are now being listened to and action is being taken. And that is why, when dealing with the US Supreme Court nomination – the second most important appointment in the States after the President – it is imperative America listens to those women accusing Brett Kavanaugh of abuse.
Putting aside the controversial views of Donald Trump’s right wing nominee for the US Supreme, last week he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for what was billed as a “job interview”.
What transpired was truly shocking. After hearing from one of Kavanaugh’s alleged victims – university professor Christine Blasey Ford who accused him of sexually assaulting her at a party in 1982 when they were both at high school, he then delivered an aggressive, belligerent, disgraceful defence of himself.
What America saw before the Senate Judiciary Committee was an impulsive man, a bitter brat switching from anger to pitiful sobs.
He appeared so bereft of balance that it was difficult not to feel uncomfortable that he might soon be the man making decisions that will affect millions of lives.
Despite what others have claimed about his drunken aggressive behaviour, Kavanaugh presented himself as the all-American jock, the model only child.
The world looked on as he teared up over keeping a calendar – something his dad did – and it showed he had not attended the party on the night of the alleged attack. He swore under oath he never “sexually assaulted anyone”.
He portrayed himself as women’s best friend, repeatedly saying it was a slur on his name to say that he could ever abuse anyone of the opposite sex because he provided them with jobs.
He went to great pains to say how he pre-emptively hired four female law clerks to work with him at the Supreme Court – the first justice, he pointed out, to have “a group of all-women law clerks”.
To entertain even the thought he was capable of abuse would be to destroy the entire premise he had always lived a holier-than-thou life.
As Republicans rushed to have Kavanaugh’s nomination confirmed with their majority vote, thankfully at the eleventh hour, sense prevailed.
The FBI has been given a week to investigate the allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
To push Kavanaugh’s confirmation through, without seeking to dispel the darkening cloud over his head, would be to leave the public in doubt about his honesty and character.
In turn, it would set an even lower standard for taking claims of sexual abuse seriously.
Politics should play no part in the appointment of a judge, yet it appears games have been played on both sides.
This is not, as Donald Trump’s Republicans have claimed, a matter of demanding the destruction of a man’s career based on vague or unsubstantiated claims. It is a matter of treating such allegations with the proper gravity.
After Cosby was sentenced, his publicist Andrew Wyatt claimed he and Kavanaugh were victims of a “sex war”.
People are wrong to compare Kavanaugh to Cosby – they are poles apart.
But what they do clearly share is that their public persona is different to the one shown to those who know them in private.
Kavanaugh has revealed himself to be capable of acting in anger, vicious in views, and aggressive even without the drink he admits to loving.
Justice would not be served by his presence on the Supreme Court.